Rashida jones says cannes’ high heels rule is sexist snobbery

The Cannes “flatgate” debate might keep raging on, but as far as we’re concerned, Rashida Jones just had the final word on the issue.

Jones sat in on “The Nightly Show” Wednesday (May 27) to discuss the film festival’s hotly-contested dress code requiring women to wear high heels to screenings. And according to the actress, this whole dumb debate is about a lot more than the relative uncomfiness of stilettos.

“It’s part of a larger problem, which is heels are the worst. They make your legs look better, whatever, but mainly it’s men designing them and setting these rules,” she said. “If they make a rule where that I have to wear heels on the carpet, then I’m making a rule that I’m just going to wear flats any time I’m asked to wear heels.”

See, Cannes Film Festival? You make an arbitrary rule, we’ll all make an arbitrary rule, it’ll be anarchy.

And Jones wasn’t done, either.

“I think it’s a snobbery thing,” she said. “I think it’s like ’this is the way we do things here,’ you know, and it’s sexist.”

Meanwhile, Cannes has issued a statement saying that its dress code actually doesn’t make specific requirements as to the heel height of women’s (or men’s) shoes, and festival director Thierry Fremaux apologized and told AFP that the moment that sparked the controversy was actually the fault of a few rogue security guards.

“There was perhaps a small moment of over-zealousness,” he said, referring to an incident wherein several older women were turned away from a screening for wearing flats.

Regardless of whether Cannes’ high heels rule exists on the books or just in certain gatekeepers’ minds, Jones still makes an important point about what it means when people who aren’t women go about making and enforcing rules that make women’s lives difficult.

Also come on, Cannes: Kicking a bunch of grandmas out of a movie and calling it “a small moment of over-zealousness” is totally just the sort of thing a sexist snob would do.